Indulging my love of poetry by posting a poem a day, every day... to inspire, delight and enlighten!

Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Day 917: Yes After No

On faith, hope, lost and newfound causes, a brilliantly illuminating poem from Wallace Stevens. I love the idea in this poem of new ideas all the time being born, as one commentator puts it: 'this hope of renewal comes from the eternal restlessness of the mind,
which cannot by its nature accept that there are any final nos.' No it cannot. And a big yes to that!

The Well-Dressed Man With a Beard - Wallace Stevens

After the final no there comes a yesAnd on that yes the future world depends.No was the night. Yes is this present sun.If the rejected things, the things denied,Slid over the western cataract, yet one,One only, one thing that was firm, evenNo greater than a cricket's horn, no moreThan a thought to be rehearsed all day, a speechOf the self that must sustain itself on speech,One thing remaining, infallible, would beEnough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart,Green in the body, out of a petty phrase,Out of a thing believed, a thing affirmed:The form on the pillow humming while one sleeps,The aureole above the humming house...It can never be satisfied, the mind, never.

No comments:

Post a Comment

I'd love to hear what you think! To leave a comment - comment as/sign in with your Google ID if you have one, or website or blog address, or if these don't apply, sign in as Anonymous, and leave your name if you like!

Poetry lovers, loathers or newbies - I'd love to hear from you! Leave a comment by clicking on comments below a postand signing in with your Google ID, blog/website or Anonymous if these do not apply. Or feel free to email me at siobhanbsb@hotmail.com

The poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life. ~Robert Penn Warren

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~Paul Engle

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. ~ Carl Sandburg

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. ~W. Somerset Maugham

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. ~Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. ~Dennis Gabor

"Always learn poems by heart," she said. "They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like the fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.'"~ Janet Fitch, 'White Oleander'

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. ~Wallace Stevens

Poetry is the development of an exclamation. ~Paul Valery

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. ~Robert Frost

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ~Percy Byshe Shelley

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~ Leonard Cohen

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry

Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. ~John Keats

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. - Anne Sexton

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? ~ Emily Dickinson

The poet is the man made to solve the riddle of the universe who brings the whole soul of man into activity. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge